Hillfolk

Create dramatic stories using narrative techniques drawn from literature and film!

Your clan of Iron Age raiders lives in perilous times. The outsiders are not to be trusted, and there is always intrigue from within. You’ll need inner strength and dogged determination if you want your clan to weather the storms to come.

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Writers of books, plays, television shows, and movies are well-versed in the structure of narrative. How characters come into conflict, how tension is increased, and how conflict is resolved are all essential to telling good stories. Hillfolk takes this well-developed sense of narrative structure and applies it to roleplaying, using the DramaSystem mechanics.

This is very much a storytelling game, meaning that the rules exist to support the crafting of a dramatically satisfying tale rather than the physics of characters and their interactions in a game world. In addition to the Iron Age setting of Hillfolk, the game includes Series Pitches (outlines) for 30 additional campaign ideas spanning a wide range of genres.

Here’s how publisher Pelgrane Press describes Hillfolk:

In a DramaSystem game, players, aided by a Game Moderator (GM), collectively create a compelling, serial story of emotional need and conflict within a tightly-knit group of people.

What Fans Love About Hillfolk

  • Driven by Drama – Rather than procedural action, the game mechanics focus on the creation of dramatic narratives in which player characters confront inner challenges and engage in emotional disputes.
  • Encourages Conflict Between Player Characters – Because in DramaSystem conflict doesn’t inexorably lead to combat, competing goals drive the story forward rather than disrupting it.
  • Extremely Portable – Hillfolk is about intra- and inter-clan conflict in the Iron Age, but the book includes many “series pitches”, and creating your own DramaSystem series requires minimal prep.

Reviews

  • “This is a great game for people who like to think about how a story is constructed and what makes dramatic characters tick, and who enjoy creating a lot of the setting material in-game.” — Sophie Legace, The Reef
  • “In my opinion it’s everything it promises to be and then some, it’s the most fun I’ve personally ever had behind the DM screen.” — SpanishNinjitsu, Reddit

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